


Unwelcome

by 221b_hound



Series: Unkissed [39]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Brother-Sister Relationships, Childhood Memories, Domestic Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homophobic Language, John's past, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Threat of Rape, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 00:56:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3876346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two weeks after Harry and John's healing meeting at the Pret, their childhood trauma makes a vicious return - when Oliver Sacker bursts aggressively back into their lives. Are they truly their father's children? It's what they both fear. It's the cruel seed at the heart of John's worst nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unwelcome

**Author's Note:**

> Please note the tags for this story. Sacker is a vile piece of work and is vicious in how he speaks to Harry and John.

John’s phone rang as he and Sherlock were leaving the Yard, and he grinned as he answered it – something he never used to do when Harry’s name flashed up on his screen. The two weeks since their talk at the Pret had brought a lot of changes.

“Hey, sis,” he greeted her, “All good?”

“Tolerably stupendous,” Harry told him, “We’re heading off for the weekend, so just calling to say cheers, and thanks for the loan of the binoculars.”

“Any time. They’re our lucky binoculars, by the way. Sherlock solved a murder with those, he says. Before my time.”

“I said someone was strangled to death with the leather cord on it,” muttered Sherlock. John shushed him with the wave of the hand. “I replaced the cord,” Sherlock protested. John shushed him again.

“All packed, then?” John asked, too loudly and brightly, hoping Harry hadn’t overheard.

“Very nearly. If only I can convince Clara we don’t need to take a bloody iPad with us on a camping trip. I adore the woman, but she’s addicted to Twitter.”

“Yeah, I’ve got one like that, though his thing is the alerts on something called, what is that thing you keep checking?” he asked of Sherlock.

“MurderNet,” said Sherlock, “Or SciScan.” He was checking his phone as they spoke.

“A couple of feeds on unusual deaths and science reports,” John told her, “I’d never get him to leave the phone behind for us to go camping.”

“What on earth is the point of _camping_?” Sherlock asked, putting his phone away and sticking out an arm for a cab.

Harry, who heard him this time, laughed. “Ah, the princess lets out a familiar refrain. I mostly convinced Clara to give it a go by promising her a night of passion under the stars.”

“God, Harry, warn a brother, would you?”

Harry just laughed raucously in his ear. “You’re just jealous you’re not getting a chance to get your princess alone in The Chilterns this weekend.”

“The Chilterns? Good luck with the ‘getting alone’ thing. Isn’t that place packed on the weekend this time of year?”

“Don’t piss on my parade, Johnny. I’ve reserved a nice little out-of-the-way spot where we can have all the privacy we need and I can even teach Clara how to fish.”

“Is that what the lesbians are calling it these days?”

“Fuck off, gayboy,” said Harry, good-humouredly.

“Here’s our cab,” John warned her as the vehicle pulled up beside them.

“God, you two, live like bloody Lord and Lady Muck with all those cabs. Catch a bus once in a while, see how the other 90% lives.”

“And ruin the line of Sherlock’s suit? Are you mad? He looks smashing in those suits. I don’t want him getting all rumpled on a bus.” He grinned at his honeybee, who rolled his eyes, but was smiling.

“You’re besotted, little brother, and he’s not a patch on the glory of Clara.”

“Enjoy your tent sex.”

“ _Oi_ , warn a sister!”

It was John’s turn to laugh raucously, and they hung up, John sagging back in the cab seat with a happy sigh. Sherlock kept poking at his phone, but his quiet smile had continued unabated.

“Ever thought you might go camping?” John asked.

“Not once in my entire life,” Sherlock said without hesitation.

John folded his hands over his stomach and nodded. “Yep, you did. A kid like you going on pirate adventures with your Dad? You would have gone camping and stayed up all night making notes about fireflies and night birds and burying treasure to find again next trip.”

He looked down as Sherlock’s hand stole over his, pinkie fingers hooked together. “I would have liked that,” he confessed softly.

John looked at Sherlock, who was now looking at him. “Sorry, sweetpea. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

“I’m not sad,” said Sherlock, “I like that we can talk about him. I haven’t, for nearly 30 years.”

John lifted Sherlock’s hand up to kiss his fingers. “Dad used to take Harry and me camping, and Mum’d come at the end of the weekend in the car and take us all for fish and chips before we went home.”

“Fish and chips.” Sherlock considered. “Dinner?”

“We’ll have a picnic on the roof,” suggested John.

The cab pulled up at Baker Street. Sherlock paid the fare while John stepped onto the footpath.

Their front door flew open and Mrs Hudson stumbled out into the street.

“John, oh John, Sherlock, thank god!”

Alarmed, John took her in his arms, holding her up as her knees wobbled, then guiding her to sit on the stoop. Sherlock was instantly at their side, his hands reaching for her too. Mrs Hudson turned her tearful face up to him. Her cheek was red and abraded.

“Who did this?” Sherlock’s voice was gentle, but there was steel under it.

“I don’t know him. I don’t know.” Mrs Hudson’s voice was shaking and her eyes were bright with tears of shock.

John could see there were no other injuries, and tilted her face so he could check the dilation of her eyes. “Look left,” he said, “Now right. Down. Up. That’s it, that’s good. We’ve got you.”

“A client?” Sherlock’s voice was brittle.

“No. No, he was looking for John. I said you weren’t home and he tried to force his way inside. I told him you were on a case and, oh, the _language_!”

John held her hands as Sherlock leapt to his feet and strode along the path, peering, urging it to tell him things that Mrs Hudson couldn’t. It yielded very little.

Mrs Hudson held tight to John’s fingers. “He got angrier and angrier and I tried to close the door and he pushed it open again and it hit me in the face… _oh_ …” Her hand flew to her reddened cheekbone.

John put his arms around her and she leaned against his chest while he cradled her. Sherlock dropped to a crouch in front of her again, his hand delicately cupping her jaw. “Did he say anything?”

“He said,” her brow furrowed, “He said…”

“Word for word, Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock said sternly. She sniffed and raised her head to meet his eye.

“He said, ‘Screw the little faggots. That c-word of a sister of his’ll do’.” Mrs Hudson sniffed again. “I tried to call you straight away but my glasses broke when the door knocked them off, and I dropped my phone, and my hands…” She curled her still-shaking hands into small fists. “I keep dropping the phone. I’m so sorry.”

“Shh, now,” said Sherlock, petting her cheek, “You’ve nothing to be sorry for. When did he leave?”

John had fished his own phone out of his pocket and was thumbing through the contacts to dial. His expression was grim.

“A few minutes ago, just before you pulled up.”

"Harry? Fuck. Voicemail." He hung up and redialled. He swore and hung up again. "I have to get there."

"Go."

John turned and banged on the side of the cab, just pulling out again, and jumped back in.

*

John kept trying to call Harry all through the journey and cursed the fact he didn't yet have Clara's new number. The cab was almost at Harry's place when his phone rang, Harry's name flashing up on the screen.

“Harry?!”

“John!” It was Clara’s voice, frantic, “God, please, get over here, he’s going nuts.”

"I'm just around the corner. I'm coming. Hold on."

The cab turned into Harry's street and John damn near bolted from the moving car at the sight of Oliver Sacker wresting a phone from Clara's hand as she crouched, terrified, in the road beside Harry's car. Harry was behind Sacker, her face smeared in blood as she launched herself at him.

"Get the fuck away from her," she shrieked.

Sacker turned and hit her in the face with the phone.

John leapt from the car as it slewed to a stop and threw himself at Sacker, knocking him away from Harry and Clara.

*

Lestrade's car – containing the DI and his sergeant – and Sherlock's cab pulled up at almost the same moment, the respective occupants tumbling out onto the street to witness the ugly tableau.

Clara Greene sitting in the road and crying, her dark eyes wide and terrified in the oval of her brown face, her back pressed against the rear wheel of Harry’s estate car with its boot popped open, revealing its load of camping gear.

John Watson standing to Clara's right, hands spread to show he was unarmed, a pose that should have been placatory, except for the coiled tension in him – the slight bend of his knees, the set of his shoulders, the curve of his arms that betrayed the ready strength in them, the grim look in his face – that showed he was preparing to charge.

Harry Watson standing to Clara's left, nose and mouth bleeding, clutching a small camp fire extinguisher as a weapon, her blood-stained teeth bared in a snarl.

Oliver Sacker – grey, grizzled, compact and muscular, his height and build proclaiming his genetic connection with his son and daughter – holding a crowbar in two fists, ready to strike.

Harry was screaming at him. “You touch her again, you bastard, and I’ll do for you, do you hear me? I’m not a little girl any more that you can just bash around so you feel like a man. I’m not mum. You touch my girl again and I’ll fucking _kill_ you.”

"You can try, you little bitch," Sacker shouted back, "and when I'm done with you, I know a bloke who won't mind fucking the gay out of you, whatever your face looks like."

John darted forward and Sacker brandished the crowbar at him, pulling it back for a swing. John fell back slightly, waiting for a better chance.

Sacker read it as something else. "Too scared of your old man to come and get it, you fairy faggot? Christ. Both my kids queers. You perverts are not _my_ kids."

"No, we're fucking not," agreed John in a low, growling voice.

"You're a sperm donor at best," Harry spat at him, “We had a dad, and he was _good_ to us.”

Sacker gave her a vicious grin. "But blood will out, eh kid? You want to knock my teeth in? Aren’t you daddy’s little girl, then? It’s the circle of fucking life here, you slut."

"I'm nothing like you!" Harry shrieked, but it was a sob too, a cry filled with anguish and fear, "I'm _not_!"

Sherlock, Lestrade and Donovan all began to move, converging as one on the scene.

"Sick fucks, all, us lot," laughed Sacker, "Look what your filthy queer of a brother did to me." He stretched his neck, revealing t splodge of an old burn scar along his throat and chin, disappearing down his shoulder and under his shirt to his back. He turned towards John again, who had started to move. “You did this to your old man. You were a disturbed, fucked up kid, and the papers are going to love hearing about what the great hero John Watson is really fucking like. Milverton was wrong, saying it wasn’t worth anything to him. I’m going to sell my story to the Sun about how you burnt your old man’s face, unless one of you coughs up the dosh.”

“Don’t forget to tell them how you’d already belted your nine year old daughter and stabbed your kids’ mother with a kitchen knife," snarled John.

He started forward again and Sacker took a swing, the crowbar hissing through the air inches from John's skull.

Sherlock roared and launched himself at Sacker, but Harry was closer, and faster, and furious. Yelling, she threw herself at Sacker, pushing the extinguisher up into his face and pulling the mechanism.

Foam went everywhere – in Sacker's eyes and nose and mouth, in his hair and ears, as Harry screamed a blood-curdling shriek of fury.

"You leave him alone, you cunting fucking pissfucking fucker!"

Sacker fell back, choking, helped along by her shove to his chest and she stood between Sacker and John, hands clenched around the extinguisher, chest heaving with her rage.

"Even when he was bloody _seven_ , Johnny was ten times the man you ever could be or will be," she shouted at him, "You’re nothing but slime. Filthy, useless _slime_. Johnny looked out for Mum and me, and he was bloody _seven years old_ , Sackershit, you vile pissbollocking fuckturd."

Sacker seemed about to rise, but his watering eyes fastened on the black shoes that appeared near his head. Looked up past tailored trousers and elegant suit jacket to a grim face with eyes like the Arctic sea that promised hellfire and retribution if he tried.

"Oh please," said Sherlock in a silky hiss, "Just give me one excuse."

Sacker, in a rare fit of self-preservation, fuelled by justified fear, decided not to give him one.

*

Donovan cuffed the bastard as Lestrade read him his rights. John turned to aid his sister, but Harry had run to Clara, dropping to her knees on the street. She reached out to cradle Clara's face in her trembling fingers.

"Baby? Clara? Are you okay? Did he hurt you, Snuffkin?"

Clara launched herself into Harry's arms, sobbing, and Harry held her. "Shh, Snuff, shh, it's okay. We're okay. We're okay, baby."

John started as Sherlock touched his shoulder, then relaxed. "Is Mrs Hudson all right?"

"She's fine. I left her with Mrs Turner."

"Thanks for calling Greg." John's tone was strangely quiet and sombre.

"Don't," said Sherlock sternly, "Don't you dare. This is not your fault."

John sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I never thought he'd come looking for us again. He was still in prison, I thought. And he went to fucking _Milverton_?"

"None of that makes this your fault. Or your responsibility. John." Sherlock placed long fingers against John’s jaw, and John looked up into his eyes. “Say after me. This is not my fault.”

“It…”

“Say after me. This is not my fault.”

“This-” John’s voice hitched briefly, but he did not take his gaze from Sherlock’s. “This is not my fault. This is not my responsibility. It’s that fuckturd’s responsibility.”

Sherlock nodded as he stroked John’s cheek with his thumb, then he pressed a soft kiss to John’s forehead. “Yes.”

The tension drained from John’s stance and he let his forehead drop against Sherlock’s shoulder. Then he huffed a laugh and said, with considerable pride, “Did you see Harry?”

Sherlock rubbed his cheek against John’s hair. “I did. She reminded me of you.”

John huffed another laugh, then straightened and went to the women at the car. Clara and Harry were still hugging each other. John poked around in the back of the car till he found a first aid kit.

“Here, Harry, let me see.”

Harry wouldn’t let go of Clara, until Clara, at last calming down, drew back from her hold. “Let John look after you, Smudge. I’m right here.”

John crouched and examined the damage. “Sherlock, could you go in the house and make up an ice pack for Harry?”

Sherlock went into the house.

Harry submitted to John’s gentle cleaning of her bloodied face, where Sacker had first backhanded her, cutting the inside of her mouth on her teeth and giving her a blood nose, and then clouted her again with the hard edge of her phone. She hissed when it stung, and squeezed Clara’s hand.

“Sorry,” said John gently.

“’S okay,” said Harry.

“It feels worse than it is, Harry,” John said, “I’ll get you something for the pain and the swelling.” He held his hand out without looking and Sherlock placed a bag of peas wrapped in a tea towel into it. John carefully rolled the impromptu cold pack over her face. “Here, Clara, help her out. Just hold it, gently, there, that’s it.”

Lestrade was calling it into despatch, getting a Black Maria and some uniforms down for statements. Donovan had a hand on Sacker’s head and another on his cuffed hands as she guided him into the car, but Sacker pushed up past her grip to yell over her shoulder at Harry and Clara: “ _Sluts_!”

Donovan shoved him roughly down and into the car. “Shut up, dirtbag.”

Harry, however, jerked her head up in snarling defiance at him. “Hey, Sergeant? Press all the charges you fucking got on that pissbrained rot-knob, yeah?”

“You got it, Watson!” Donovan called back.

“You’re a fucking champion, Sarge!”

Donovan, grinning, lounged against the car door, took out a notebook and started making case notes. Lestrade got off the call from despatch and spoke with her. A moment later, Donovan was knocking on a nearby door, seeking witnesses and a statement.

“Is this the copper you sent the flowers to? She’s pretty.”

Harry turned back at Clara’s comment, smiled and stroked her fingers over Clara’s cheek. “Not as beautiful as my girl, she isn’t.”

Clara pressed her hand over Harry’s, holding it close to her skin.

“I want you to press charges too, Snuffkin, all the ones they’ve got.”

“Count on it, Harry. My brave Smudge.”

Harry blushed then preened at the praise, and turned back to John. “You too. Press charges.” She looked up at Sherlock. “Make sure he does. All the fucking charges they can make stick. I’m not having this shit all over again.”

Two uniforms had arrived. Leaving Sacker in their care, Lestrade had come over to hear the end of this.

“Don’t you worry, Miss Watson,” Lestrade promised her, "I'll plan to start with disturbing the peace and work my way up to attempted homicide, and see what else I can throw at him along the way.” He grinned at John. “It’s easy to see you and your sister are cut from the same bolt of cloth."

Harry and John looked at each other, startled, and then with pride.

"Yeah. We are," said John.

*

Once the wagon had taken Sacker away for processing, Lestrade and Donovan following to make sure everything was watertight and by the book, the two uniformed officers sat with Harry, Clara, John and Sherlock to take their initial statements. Harry’s face was bruising, and Clara sat holding her hand and looking at her like she was made of diamonds. Despite the injury and the violence of the afternoon, Harry sat tall and strong.

When the officers left, Sherlock rose. “Lestrade will see to Sacker’s incarceration,” he said, “He is very nearly competent, and can’t fail to do so, with the weight of evidence I will be providing, for this and the other crimes Sacker has committed recently.”

“Is that a princess promise?” she asked with a sardonic lift of the eyebrow, then she winced as the movement made her bruises twinge.

Sherlock leaned over the table, glowering and grim. “Yes. It is,” he said.

Harry flashed a grin at him. “Every day I see more and more why Johnny likes you so much.” Then she sobered. “Thanks. I mean it. Thank you. Look after Johnny, yeah?”

His expression softened into a near smile. Then he straightened and held out his hand. John took it, they said their goodbyes and left.

John was quiet for the whole cab ride home. They stopped in to make sure Mrs Hudson was all right, and to suggest that she, too, press charges. Then upstairs, John put the kettle on. While it boiled, he wandered over to the window to stare at the street.

Sherlock came to stand alongside him.

“What other crimes?” John asked, still looking at the street.

“Dealing in heroin,” said Sherlock, “Handling stolen goods. I’m not certain, but I suspect housebreaking as well. He came down from Leeds today – I’ll carry out some enquiries before giving Lestrade the details.”

John nodded. The kettle switched itself off, but he didn’t move.

“John?”

“I think you were right after all,” said John, “About Ollie. The names Ollie and Oliver. I mean, it’s not surprising I had nightmares after all of that, considering, but that’s when the bird nightmare came back, after I hadn’t had it for years. When Ollie shot me.”

Sherlock stood close, also looking out into the street, his shoulder pressed alongside John’s. He didn’t speak.

“Today wasn’t my fault. But…” John took a breath to steel himself. “But that violence he has in him; I have that in me, too. Look at our lives. I like the action. The adrenalin. Your brother once told me the war didn’t haunt me. I missed it. And he was right. Sometimes I think… that angry thing in the bird dream isn’t Sacker. It’s me.”

He swallowed.

“I have a temper, same as Harry, even if I’ve learned to control it better. And that’s the same as him. And I think… all this stuff. All this feeling that I’m not doing enough. It’s because… because I think… I’m afraid… deep down. I’m just like him. It’s what scares Harry too. Why she drank so much. ”

“Well,” said Sherlock kindly, “I suppose neither of you can help being idiots.”

John cut a sharp look at him then, at last. Sherlock’s expression was surprisingly gentle.

“Harry could have brained him with the extinguisher today,” said Sherlock, “She had cause enough. Yet she chose instead to set the foam off in his face. She acted when you were in immediate danger, decisively, with a relatively nonviolent solution to a violent attack. She made a choice.”

Sherlock took John by the shoulders and turned him so they faced each other. “Sacker accused her of being like him, and she proved to him, and to herself, that it was not true. When she was presented with the opportunity to behave as he does, she didn’t take it.”

“Yeah,” said John, moved, “She was… fantastic.”

“Oliver Sacker’s motivations in life are to take what he wants, and to hurt others in order to get his own way. He uses his temper and his violence as tools to that end – to intimidate, to terrify and to harm, even against his own children, and without remorse. He is, in short, John, a monster.”

John’s hands were curled into fists at his side, but he waited.

“You and Harry have possibly inherited his predisposition to a hot temper. But I have told you – and you know perfectly well yourself – that environment shapes such predispositions in different ways. You spent early years in an environment of violence, and it revisited you at a formative stage in your life. But you must not mistake superficial resemblance for a causal link. Usually, you are smart enough to avoid that error. But we know… it’s not always so easy to identify those things in ourselves, to separate the coincidental from the causal.”

“I’m a violent man, Sherlock.”

“No. You are a fighter, and capable of violence, but that’s not the same thing at all. Where Oliver Sacker is cruel, vicious and violent for only his own sake, you are a soldier acclimatised to violence, but with a strong moral principle as a framework. You direct your energies in constructive ways, designed to disarm greater violence, to protect those who are vulnerable and to save lives.”

Sherlock’s eyes were bright and blazing, and though he spoke softly, he was not John’s honeybee right now. No. Right now, he was Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective, the sharp mind and blunt tongue that brooked no stupidity from anyone. Not even the man he loved.

“I have looked monsters in the eye, John. Jim Moriarty. The assassin Grogin, who gave me that scar in my thigh. Charles Milverton. Oliver Sacker. The have characteristics in common – a coldness that translates in mannerisms, facial tics, their steady heartrates while boasting of their deeds. And the deeds themselves. Looking into those eyes is like staring into a void. And you…” He gripped John by the jaw, “You are no monster. I don’t say this out of sentiment. I say this as a fact. There is no monster in you, John. A righteous rage, perhaps, but it is harnessed and directed. It’s a scalpel, not a blunt instrument.”

And then his grip softened, as did his expression, and he was stroking John’s cheek with his thumb. “Oh, John. My John. How long have you carried this fear?”

When John spoke, his voice shook. “I don’t think I realised till today that I did.”

“Then let it go. His genes are not your destiny. His brutishness is not your love of action. You have shaped yourself into a force for protection, not violation. _You are nothing like him_.”

John’s face moved through a cascade of thoughts and emotions, but the one that emerged was a kind of hopeful acceptance.

“I believe you,” he said.

Sherlock cupped John’s face in both his hands and kissed him. John wound his arms around Sherlock’s waist, snugging in close, chest to chest, belly to belly, his hands running, splayed, down Sherlock’s back to rest on the rise of his backside, his face tilted up and eyes closed, their kiss warm and tender and leisurely.

Then John kissed Sherlock’s throat, and laid his cheek on Sherlock’s chest and sighed.

Sherlock slid his arms around John’s back too and they stood like that, in the afternoon light that spilled through the window.

“And now Harry knows she is nothing like him either,” said Sherlock softly after a moment, “She chose defence but not brutality. She protected Clara. And you.”

“Yeah. She did, didn’t she?” There was that pride again.

Sherlock continued to hold his husband close, listening with all of his senses to John’s breathing, his heartrate, the way he held his body, alert for any sign of distress or tension. John was calm, content in his arms. And yet… Sherlock would not have said _at peace_.

“I know where we can get excellent fish and chips,” said Sherlock suddenly, “If the chippy is still there. It’s been a while.”

“Let’s go, then.”

To John’s surprise, Sherlock took them to a Zipcar and drove them out of the city heading north then west. The sun was painting the western sky in pastels and orange when he pulled up by a row of shops and a chip shop that had stood the test of time. They ordered and John held the hot package on his lap, still not asking what this was about, as Sherlock drove on to a nearby park, unkempt and slightly overgrown.

They found a bench and sat with the fish and chips folded out on the seat between them.

“My father used to bring me to this park,” said Sherlock, and he started eating chips.

John looked at the trees and path and the elongated pond as though it were enchanted.

“There’s nothing special about it,” said Sherlock, “It’s just a park.”

John ate a few chips, tore off some fish, then sucked salt, vinegar and grease from his thumb. “What did you do here?”

“We made a boat out of bark once. It sank three minutes after we pushed it off in the pond, and then I fell in trying to get it out again, and Daddy had to come in after me. I thought I was in so much trouble, but once he knew I was all right, he laughed. He shouted ‘Captain Overboard!’ and said all pirates needed to learn how to swim. He took me to the pool for lessons after that.” He smiled. “All these things I thought I’d forgotten.” He ate another chip and said to John, “Did your Dad teach you to swim?”

“Oh yeah,” said John, grinning at the memory, “He took me and Harry, and Harry told him she knew how to swim already, which was a big fat fib, so when he was teaching me how to float, she just jumped in the deep end and thrashed around like a herring having a fit. He had to scoop me up and dump me on the side then go grab her before she went under for the third time. He told her off, of course – scared him half to death – but she started crying and he took pity on her and spent the afternoon teaching both of us to float. We had ice cream after. I was about six, I guess.”

“Daddy bought me toffees, usually,” Sherlock said, “Mycroft said it was so he could have a guaranteed half hour of quiet.”

“I’ve seen you eat toffee,” John said, laughing, “It doesn’t work.”

“No.” Sherlock held a chip up for John, who bit it out of his fingers. Then he held up some fish for Sherlock. Sherlock wrapped his lips around it far enough to suck some of the salt from John’s fingers, too.

For half an hour they sat there, feeding each other, telling stories about their fathers. How Sherlock’s father read pirate stories to him, taught him to make a skeleton man out of vegetables, and listened to his little boy expounding on everything from why Worzel Gummidge should have another spare, fireproof, head for Guy Fawkes Night to the lifecycle of frogs. How John’s dad told him of course he could be good at rugby even though he was always the littlest kid on the team, and pretended he liked John’s special toasted cheese, Marmite and fish spread on toast that time he was experimenting, and taught John how to strip and rebuild an engine, which had once come in very handy on patrol in Afghanistan.

When they’d eaten, John scrunched up the wrapping and found a bin. When Sherlock gave a sudden gruff shout of triumph, he turned to see Sherlock diving for a clump of shrubs, disappearing from view.

“John!” came the cry.

John trotted over and when Sherlock didn’t emerge, he pushed through the tangle of growth to find Sherlock crouched within. He’d taken the small flashlight from his pocket and shone the beam on a crude X carved into the scrubby tree at the centre of the shrubs.

“X marks the spot, John.”

John ran his fingers over the mark.

“You made this?”

“With a Swiss army knife,” Sherlock confirmed. “Of course, these shrubs weren’t here at the time, and it was lower to the ground. But see?” He moved the beam, and down from the X were the smaller, crude initials – SWH.

John pressed his fingers to those markings too. He looked on the verge of leaning down to kiss them. Sherlock caught John’s fingers up in his, instead, and lifted them to his mouth, to kiss the pads.

“I thought I had to be like my mother, to gain her approval,” he said, “Or like Mycroft. But I was never satisfactory, and I was never happy. I forgot that I had a whole other side to who I was, and who I could be.” He kissed John’s fingers again. “We have our DNA, and our experiences, and our choices, John. All of us. You are so much more the product of Jack and Fiona Watson, and your own choices, than you are of only half your genetic code. And who knows how environment shaped what you know of the man who provided that half? You started over with that code in its basic form. You made it something else. Someone unique.”

John tugged their joined hands close to his chest and leaned forward to kiss Sherlock’s lips. Then he said, “We’d better get out from the undergrowth before someone tries to get us arrested for suspicious behaviour in a public park.”

The drive home was in companionable quiet, with John’s hand resting on Sherlock’s thigh as he drove, and they talked of plans for the week, an upcoming trial for which Sherlock was a witness, and what Sherlock had deduced so far about Sally Donovan’s mysterious new boyfriend.

At home, John finally got around to making tea and they snuggled on the sofa, John reclining against Sherlock chest, a blanket pulled up over the both of them while the speakers spilled out the graceful notes of a Verdi opera. Sherlock read John’s body with his own again, and there, at last, at last, those tiny tells, so hard to discern, but together they told Sherlock: _at peace_.

John pressed a hand to Sherlock’s two hands folded over his chest. “When did you get so good at this, sweetpea? Knowing me? Knowing what I need?”

“It’s a work in progress,” Sherlock confessed, “I learn more every day. It will be my life’s work.”

“After crime and bees.” John smiled.

“No, not _after_ , no. I don’t think so.” Sherlock kissed him.

“I’m still going to look after you, honeybee. That’s _my_ life’s work.”

“Along with crime and writing your dreadful memoirs?”

"Yes, my little bug. And singing you terrible love songs.” He hummed a few bars of _My Boy Lollipop_ in demonstration.

“Good.” Sherlock bumped his nose alongside John’s temple, to his cheek, and kissed the side of his husband’s mouth. “I married you for the terrible songs, after all.”

John’s smile turned impish and he began to sing.

_Night and day, you are the one  
Only you beneath the moon and under the sun…_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Here is a site showing the [skeleton vegetable man.](http://feedingfourlittlemonkeys.blogspot.com.au/2008/10/veggie-skeleton.html)


End file.
